simultaneous entry of records

[prodigy]

Hi,
I am facing an issue as described in the following:

Scenario:
I have an assignment where the client requires to store its customer detail electronically (ie In soft copy). (e.g Last 5 years data are in hard copy/hard Form format).

They require an application that will help them to enter 10,00,000 records (customer details) in a given span of time.

They have suggested that almost 70-80 operators will work simultaneously in respective console to enter customer information.

Now, every active customer has account number. New customers are given account number from inactive ones.

So, there is a high possibility that while operator1 enters new customer detail and at the same time operator2 while attempting to enter the old customer detail of the same account number will not be allowed as the account number is unique.

My concern is:
With such a huge number of records to enter, will the application get slow. I plan to develop it in access_FrontEnd and SQLserver2000_BackEnd.

I wish to validate account number search: ie when operatorX attempts to add customer record to database it will first check if the same account number already exists.

If I am able to make anyone understand my concern.

Any suggestion is highly appreciated.
Any suggestion in the design aspect…

Thanks,
Prodigy.

 

[BGolden]

Hi Prodigy,
Couldn't you simply make the account# field a key with no duplicates. Then the table would not accept a duplicate.

The bigger problem is going to be the data entry. Even with 99.9% accuracy, you are going to have a lot of errors. Anyway to scan the hard copy and use some sort of optical recognition program to input the data? There again, I am not sure how accurate optical recognition is. Failing in that, you may have resort to a double entry, where the operator enters the number twice in separate fields and then compares the two fields. this won't eliminate the errors, but it will cut them down.

Good Luck!

 

[Len Boorman]

I think that adding details against existing customers is okay. The problem hangs around allocating new account numbers from inactive.

Think this is where I Whoa.

Only 1 person will reactivate account numbers and set customer details.

So

When new account needed customer details passed to Account Operator.

When Account created then Customer details passed back to mass input area.

Okay others here may have better ideas but from the point of multiple inputs I do not see areal problem as they are literally only transactions

There could be an issue with that many signed on. I know Access is supposed to support 255 concurrent users but heard it slows dramatically above 40 or so.

Maybe others would like to comment on this as I have no first hand experience

L

 

[boblarson]

As for the number of users, I would definitely say that each user better have a copy of the frontend on their machine, or you're going to spend a lot of time picking up the pieces.

Look into the auto updating utility I wrote at:
http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=111132
It's not perfect and I've had mixed reviews as to whether it works or not and I don't know why it does work for some and not for others. Also, if you choose to explore that option, I would suggest downloading the version further on down the thread that was enhanced by OldSoftBoss.